Guidelines for Summer of Code Students
Florian Ragwitz
Students,
This mail is trying lay out some guidelines all TPF summer of code
students should be following. I'm trying to keep this as small as
possible. If you're interested in more reading on how exactly this
summer of code thing works, I can wholeheartedly recommend the
unofficial students manual at http://www.booki.cc/gsocstudentguide/ and
the chapters following that.
Your mentor*s*
==============
This year we have the luxury of giving each student two mentors, to
provide you with more feedback, to reduce the load on the mentors, and
to be able to detect problems as early as possible.
The summer of code website only allows one person to be signed up as an
official mentor. That's your primary mentor. The second person listed
next to your project in the previously announced list of accepted
projects is your backup mentor.
It's up to the mentors of your project to decide how they want to divide
the mentoring duties. Your mentors will let you know how things are
going to work. However, one thing the backup mentor absolutely must do
is to follow the progress of your project. That's why all communication
you're having with your mentor should, where possible, be available to
your backup mentor as well. For emails, Cc him or make sure he's
subscribed to the mailing list you're discussing your progress on. If
you're discussing things on IRC, try to do it in a channel where both of
your mentors are present.
I recommend you get in touch with your mentors early. Say hi in an email
or on IRC - they're all nice guys and as excited about your projects as
you are.
Community bonding period
========================
Now that you're accepted the summer of code program suggests that you
prepare yourself for the coming tasks. Some of your projects require
preliminary work. Make sure you'll manage to finish that before the
coding period starts. Familiarise yourself with the version control
system being used for the project you're working on, find out what
coding style you're expected to use, etc.
All these things are excellent opportunities to get involved in the
community you'll be working with. Sign up for the development mailing
list of your project and try to hang out on its IRC channel. Play with
the existing code base and learn to find your way around it and
experiment. Ask questions as they come up. Get to know some of the other
contributors. Your mentors will be happy to introduce you.
Be sure to get to the point where you can actually start your work when
the coding period begins on May 23.
Regular status reports
======================
We don't want you to feel alone in your endeavour. We want to help you
as much and as well as we can. For that, it's critical to know what
you're up to.
To ensure we're not missing out on anything, we need you to update us on
your progress on a regular basis. We ask you to do this by sending an
email to both of your mentors as well as the
tpf-soc-...@googlegroups.com mailing list at the beginning of each
week. Start by the beginning of the coding period at latest, but of
course we'd also love to hear what you're up to in the community bonding
period, so feel free to keep us updated even before that. Feel free to
also send a copy of your report to your project's mailing list or any
other place you like, such as your personal blog.
These reports don't have to be very long. Include a brief summary of
whatever you've been working on the week before and which milestones you
might have completed as well as things such as the problems you've
overcome, possible new problems you're facing, links to code you've
written, and things you might be blocking on.
Based on these reports, your mentors will provide you with feedback on
what you've done, and try to help you plan the next steps for the
following week.
If, for whatever reason, you won't be able to send your report in a
timely fashion, please give your mentors advance notice and try to
explain what the problem is, when it might be over, and what they might
be able to do to help you fix it.
Please don't miss status reports. It's our primary way to know what
you're up to, and without knowing that, we can't help you. For a
successful summer of code project, good communication is
essential. Failures to communicate will lead to failing projects almost
all the time. Try not to fail at communication :-)
Similarly, if your mentors fail you and don't provide feedback to your
status reports or replies to your questions in a reasonable amount of
time, make that known. Send me an email, and we'll work on fixing the
problem. Spend as little time as possible waiting and doing nothing.
Be proactive
============
If you ever get lost or run into a problem you're not able to solve on
your own in a reasonable amount of time, don't wait for your mentors to
notice that on their own and offer their help. Instead, ask questions
early and often. That's one of the most important things mentors are
there for.
If you don't understand your mentor's answer right away, follow up on
it. Ask for specific examples, guidance, and suggestions.
Plan ahead, but not too much
============================
Your mentors are there to help you figure out what the next thing you
should be hacking on is, but they have other responsibilities too, so it
might take them a couple of days to get back to you. Therefore, always
be sure to understand what the next step will be so you won't end up
being blocked by your mentor's communication lag and do nothing for a
week.
However, don't think too far ahead either. Don't get lost in trying to
figure out how all the things you're working on are going to fit
together. Your mentor will ensure that all the steps will fall into
place naturally.
Stay focused
============
We love to see you getting involved with the community you're working
with as well as the greater Perl community. However, don't get
side-tracked too much in discussions about what your project should or
shouldn't do with other community members that might have a much less
deep understanding of what it is you're trying to achieve. Remember the
scope of your projects as per your proposal and only change it in
agreement with your mentors.
Evaluations
===========
At two points during the summer your work will be evaluated by your
mentors: once in a mid-term evaluation, due June 15, and once in a final
evaluation, due August 26.
The most important measure your mentors will use for your evaluations is
the project schedule you prepared as part of your application. If you're
too far behind on the milestones in there, being failed becomes quite
likely.
Make sure to stick to your time-line as close as you can, but also note
that the schedule is not set in stone. When you and your mentors
discover unforeseen problems, for example, you should discuss
appropriate modifications of the schedule. Changes to the schedule are
only possible in agreement with the mentors. Your mentors will maintain
one authoritative version of the schedule and share the updated version
with you whenever it is changed.
If, at any point, you're unsure if you'd be passed or failed if the next
evaluation was happening tomorrow, someone failed to communicate. You
should always be clear about what your mentor's expectations are and how
well you're currently fulfilling them. If you aren't, bring the issue
up, either to your mentors or to me privately, and we'll figure things
out.
In a similar fashion to how the mentors will evaluate you, you will also
be asked to evaluate your mentors. And exactly like the grade your
mentors will give you shouldn't ever be a surprise, your mentors should
always know how satisfied you are with their performance at any
point. If you're unhappy about your mentors' response times, the amount
of guidance they give you, or the way they communicate, tell them! If
that doesn't help, drop me an email describing your problem and we'll
get it sorted out. Don't be shy - we love feedback and want to improve.
If you follow these guidelines, there will be nothing that could
possibly stop you from completing your project successfully. But
nevertheless, I wish you the best of luck during the summer :-)